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Did Paulwell say that?
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Dear Editor,
I saw in the news where the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant's problems worsened to the point where it was placed in the same class as Chernobyl. Some politicians and others are pushing for nuclear power plants to be installed in Jamaica.
This might not be too bad if proper care is taken. Maybe we could consider one of the new concept fail- safe reactors (in development) or perhaps a Thorium-fuelled reactor after the Indians perfect the technology. This makes you wonder about Philip Paulwell, the PNP shadow minister of energy, who was reported in The Gleaner in March as saying that a 50-megawatt nuclear power plant could be the size of a bathtub.
If someone told me there was such a reactor in the next room, I'd find a pencil and write my last will and testament as fast as I could, because I'd expect to be dead in days due to radiation poisoning.
Being an engineer and having a basic idea of the size of things, I figure that the only thing that could be the size of a bathtub would be the unshielded reactor core, and even one of the cooling water pumps for dissipating the megawatts of waste energy would be bigger than a bathtub.
This size reactor would have to be placed beside a source of cooling water, such as the sea, and would have to pump thousands of gallons per minute to remove the waste heat. How about us putting a nuclear reactor beside the nearest available large body of water for cooling?
We in Jamaica are even now reported to be expecting a major earthquake, and our island is criss-crossed with faults, and we have faults offshore, so should we put it beside the sea with the possibility of a Fukushima repeat? As it is, almost all our conventional power plants are near the sea, so a disaster only leaves us with an oily mess and no electricity.
Is ignorance bliss? Not in nuclear reactors it isn't! Ignorance and miscalculation in nuclear power equals death, contamination, and genetic mutation/cancer (as in Chernobyl even now)! Contamination with Plutonium 236 (which has a half-life of 24,000 years), a fission byproduct of Uranium would persist for tens of thousands of years.
Perhaps Mr Paulwell should consider getting some engineering advice to avoid delivering himself of such a load of nonsense again. Perhaps politicians should be replaced by engineers? They might get it right.
Howard Chin
hmc14@cwjamaica.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lette...#ixzz1Ob9aH928
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Dear Editor,
I saw in the news where the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant's problems worsened to the point where it was placed in the same class as Chernobyl. Some politicians and others are pushing for nuclear power plants to be installed in Jamaica.
This might not be too bad if proper care is taken. Maybe we could consider one of the new concept fail- safe reactors (in development) or perhaps a Thorium-fuelled reactor after the Indians perfect the technology. This makes you wonder about Philip Paulwell, the PNP shadow minister of energy, who was reported in The Gleaner in March as saying that a 50-megawatt nuclear power plant could be the size of a bathtub.
If someone told me there was such a reactor in the next room, I'd find a pencil and write my last will and testament as fast as I could, because I'd expect to be dead in days due to radiation poisoning.
Being an engineer and having a basic idea of the size of things, I figure that the only thing that could be the size of a bathtub would be the unshielded reactor core, and even one of the cooling water pumps for dissipating the megawatts of waste energy would be bigger than a bathtub.
This size reactor would have to be placed beside a source of cooling water, such as the sea, and would have to pump thousands of gallons per minute to remove the waste heat. How about us putting a nuclear reactor beside the nearest available large body of water for cooling?
We in Jamaica are even now reported to be expecting a major earthquake, and our island is criss-crossed with faults, and we have faults offshore, so should we put it beside the sea with the possibility of a Fukushima repeat? As it is, almost all our conventional power plants are near the sea, so a disaster only leaves us with an oily mess and no electricity.
Is ignorance bliss? Not in nuclear reactors it isn't! Ignorance and miscalculation in nuclear power equals death, contamination, and genetic mutation/cancer (as in Chernobyl even now)! Contamination with Plutonium 236 (which has a half-life of 24,000 years), a fission byproduct of Uranium would persist for tens of thousands of years.
Perhaps Mr Paulwell should consider getting some engineering advice to avoid delivering himself of such a load of nonsense again. Perhaps politicians should be replaced by engineers? They might get it right.
Howard Chin
hmc14@cwjamaica.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lette...#ixzz1Ob9aH928
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